Failing tests when running rspec under spring

[elitalon]

Hi,

I am running the following command to execute some tests:

spring rspec spec/models

and three test fails:

1) User should have secure password
     Failure/Error: it { should have_secure_password }
     NoMethodError:
       undefined method `has_secure_password?' for #<User:0x007f807da9b5c8>
     # ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:16:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'

  2) User#save when email address is already taken 
     Failure/Error: it { should validate_uniqueness_of(:email) }
     NoMethodError:
       undefined method `validate_uniqueness_of' for #<RSpec::Core::ExampleGroup::Nested_1::Nested_4::Nested_6:0x007f807b352430>
     # ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:62:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'

  3) User#save when email address is already taken with equivalent email address 
     Failure/Error: it { should validate_uniqueness_of(:email) }
     NoMethodError:
       undefined method `validate_uniqueness_of' for #<RSpec::Core::ExampleGroup::Nested_1::Nested_4::Nested_6::Nested_1:0x007f807af7de90>
     # ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:68:in `block (5 levels) in <top (required)>'

However, all tests pass when running them outside spring (rspec spec/models, I am not using the binstub).

I honestly don't know if it's something related to shoulda-matchers. But it seems spring is missing to load something.

Thanks

[elitalon]

I can confirm that is something related to shoulda-matchers. I managed to solve the problem by adding the gem both in development and test groups:

group :test do
  gem 'mocha', :require => false
  # gem 'shoulda-matchers'
  gem 'capybara'
end

group :development do
  gem 'spring'
  gem 'listen'
  gem "spring-commands-rspec", require: false
end

group :development, :test do
  gem 'factory_girl_rails'
  gem 'shoulda-matchers'
  gem 'rspec-rails'
end

I assume that spring runs with the development environment, hence the error. Am I right?

[jonleighton]

What do the bundler-related lines in your config/application.rb say? It would be very helpful if you can create an example application which reproduces this problem.

[elitalon]

You can see the application in its repository. I'm working right now in the rails-dev branch.

Commit e1561a4e15 contains the failing behavior and commit 7c5a9b982b fixes it.

As for the config/application.rb file there are no changes between these commits.

[jonleighton]

Thanks. So spring is definitely requiring the gems in your test group correctly. You can verify that with the following patch:

diff --git a/Gemfile b/Gemfile
index b0c8772..ac509ee 100644
--- a/Gemfile
+++ b/Gemfile
@@ -46,12 +46,12 @@ end

 group :test do
   gem 'capybara'
+  gem 'shoulda-matchers', require: "shoulda-matchers-require"
 end

 group :development, :test do
   gem 'factory_girl_rails'
   gem 'rspec-rails'
-  gem 'shoulda-matchers'
 end

 group :development do
@@ -61,4 +61,4 @@ group :development do
 end

 # Use ActiveModel has_secure_password
-gem 'bcrypt-ruby', '~> 3.0.0'
\ No newline at end of file
+gem 'bcrypt-ruby', '~> 3.0.0'

This causes bundler to try to run require "shoulda-matchers-require" when spring starts, which blows up, proving that the bundler require of the test group is actually happening.

The reason it doesn't work turns out to be due to shoulda-matchers specifically. In particular these lines check for the RSpec constant when should-matchers is required, and only load in the rspec stuff if that constant exists. When you run the plain rspec command, rspec gets loaded before your rails application starts, hence this works. But when spring starts your application, rspec hasn't been loaded yet so it doesn't work.

If you move the rspec-rails line in your Gemfile above the shoulda-matchers line, it will also work since that causes rspec to get loaded first.

But really I think the best way to fix this is in shoulda-matchers - if they tried to require rspec like so, then it would work regardless of the ordering in your Gemfile:

begin
  require 'rspec'
rescue LoadError
  # do nothing
else
  require 'shoulda/matchers/integrations/rspec'
end

So if you want to take this further, I suggest filing an issue with the shoulda-matchers project.

[elitalon]

Nice explananation! Thanks for your effort.

I'm getting started with Rails so I'd rather focus on more important stuff than messing around with these kind of things for now. I'll use your workaround anyway 😉

[kmamykin]

Another way to fix this is to use require: false option in Gemfile and then manually require 'shoulda-matchers' in spec_helper.rb as the last require after application and all other gems are loaded.

[kurtfunai]

Thank you @jonleighton and @kmamykin!

[rodrigomageste]

Thank you @kmamykin and @jonleighton

[davidcpell]

thanks @kmamykin that worked like a charm. having shoulda-matchers above rspec-rails wasn't doing it for me.

[AntonTrapp]

Thanks @kmamykin, as @davidcpell mentioned the order of rspec-rails has nothing to do with the failure and it does not solve the problem. The manual require does!
@jonleighton: would be great to edit your posting as everybody with the same problem tries out the not-working solution first ;)